Overview: William Poundstone’s chapter for the New Media Poetics anthology is more of a process piece than anything else. He describes the origin of his inspiration for his electronic production and discusses some of the limitations he experienced in creating it. He concludes noting that his e-literary style changes with the digital conventions of the time and very well might be unrecognizable in his next piece. Then again, perhaps not: “I may change my mind again in six months” (248)
Summary: Poundstone explains that his inspiration for ”3 Proposals for Bottle Imps” came from the observation that most Web-based poetry is “not strongly narrative” (245). He notes that some people reference movie title sequences as a form of narrative poetry, but he dismisses this. Still, he finds it interesting that the audience seems able to read all of the title sequence regardless of how fast the text disappears from the screen.
With this in mind, Poundstone created a flash piece of three segments. He uses “time-based multimedia,” and is hesitant in doing so. After all, when the text only appears for a preset number of seconds, how do you account for slower readers? Poundstone assuages these fears with his own research, which suggests that you can flash a single word for 1/24 of a second and viewers almost always “get it.”
Each of the three segments tells a short story and then proposes a “Bottle Imp” creation Bottle Imps, Poundstone notes, refers to a novel by Raymond Roussel in which “Bottle Imps” are tiny machines that create and act out stories with puppets. Feeling as though this world in which storytelling has been co-opted by the machine has great potential, Poundstone proposes various stories that the Bottle Imps could act out and suggests the various props they might use. Notably, however, he does not put on these productions himself in the flash piece.
Commentary: Poundstone notes that Roussel is firm in constructing the bottle imps as mystifying, not clarifying. That is, spectators enjoy the pomp and dazzle of the tiny puppet productions, but never understand the meaning of the stories until a human explains them. In this way, Roussel implicitly affirms that while machines hold great potential for the literary, that they are ultimately dependent on human interpreters.
The creation process took several months and Poundstone used his own design and coding (though he later admits to using flash creation freeware that limited the amount of coding knowledge needed). Finally, he concludes that the only thought that continues to plague him after the fact is whether or not the piece is “overly” manipulative (or dependent on reader interaction).
Questions: Is time-based multimedia capable of limiting the reader’s experience? Is it possible for e-lit to be “overly” manipulative/interactive? Have we seen this yet?
William Poundstone’s chapter for the New Media Poetics anthology is more of a process piece than anything else. He describes the origin of his inspiration for his electronic production and discusses some of the limitations he experienced in creating it. He concludes noting that his e-literary style changes with the digital conventions of the time and very well might be unrecognizable in his next piece. Then again, perhaps not: “I may change my mind again in six months” (248)
Summary:
Poundstone explains that his inspiration for ”3 Proposals for Bottle Imps” came from the observation that most Web-based poetry is “not strongly narrative” (245). He notes that some people reference movie title sequences as a form of narrative poetry, but he dismisses this. Still, he finds it interesting that the audience seems able to read all of the title sequence regardless of how fast the text disappears from the screen.
With this in mind, Poundstone created a flash piece of three segments. He uses “time-based multimedia,” and is hesitant in doing so. After all, when the text only appears for a preset number of seconds, how do you account for slower readers? Poundstone assuages these fears with his own research, which suggests that you can flash a single word for 1/24 of a second and viewers almost always “get it.”
Each of the three segments tells a short story and then proposes a “Bottle Imp” creation
Bottle Imps, Poundstone notes, refers to a novel by Raymond Roussel in which “Bottle Imps” are tiny machines that create and act out stories with puppets. Feeling as though this world in which storytelling has been co-opted by the machine has great potential, Poundstone proposes various stories that the Bottle Imps could act out and suggests the various props they might use. Notably, however, he does not put on these productions himself in the flash piece.
Commentary:
Poundstone notes that Roussel is firm in constructing the bottle imps as mystifying, not clarifying. That is, spectators enjoy the pomp and dazzle of the tiny puppet productions, but never understand the meaning of the stories until a human explains them. In this way, Roussel implicitly affirms that while machines hold great potential for the literary, that they are ultimately dependent on human interpreters.
The creation process took several months and Poundstone used his own design and coding (though he later admits to using flash creation freeware that limited the amount of coding knowledge needed). Finally, he concludes that the only thought that continues to plague him after the fact is whether or not the piece is “overly” manipulative (or dependent on reader interaction).
Questions:
Is time-based multimedia capable of limiting the reader’s experience?
Is it possible for e-lit to be “overly” manipulative/interactive? Have we seen this yet?
3 Proposals for Bottle Imps:
http://www.williampoundstone.net/Bottle.html